Friday, October 29, 2010

LA Times 4pm UPDATE: More details emerge in $3-million DWP fraud case (POCKETED MONEY FOR SUPPLIES -- USED FOR OFFICES USED BY HIS MAJESTY, MAYOR ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA!!!!)

Here we go...first Bell...now we will start to find out some of the ways the people in LOS ANGELES are pilfering off the top and placing in back pockets of selves and cronies. It happens ALL OVER THE CITY...INCLUDING LAUSD...AND IS THE REASON THE CITY NEVER HAS ENOUGH MONEY TO GET STUFF DONE...PILFER-PALOOZA...Aka: The City of Los Angeles on a DAILY BASIS!

More details emerge in $3-million DWP fraud case

LA TIMES: October 29, 2010 | 4:22pm

The two Los Angeles city workers accused of defrauding the Department of Water and Power by inflating the cost of supplies and then pocketing the difference purchased furniture and other materials for the renovation of offices used by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's five-member DWP board, officials said Friday.

Over the last two years, the utility has obtained new furniture for executive offices on the 7th, 9th and 15th floors of DWP's downtown Los Angeles headquarters, as well as the room where the DWP commission holds its public meetings, said Joe Ramallo, a spokesman for the utility.

Ramallo said those purchases are among the transactions included in the felony fraud case against employees Akbar Fonooni, 55, and Anthony Carone, 49.

"It appears by our own review that furniture and materials purchased for use in the commission offices and board room was involved," he said.

Prosecutors allege that Fonooni and Carone engaged in a scheme over a six-year period in which they purchased at least $3 million worth of supplies for the DWP from dummy companies that marked up the cost by 10% or more. The two men, as well as a third defendant, Troy Mitchell Holt, 45, face felony charges of conspiracy, conflict of interest and misappropriation of public funds.

Fonooni and Carone made the purchases using roughly a dozen of the DWP's "P-cards," or purchasing cards, which had a monthly spending limit of $20,000. Because those cards did not allow a single expenditure to exceed $2,000, the defendants were forced to split purchase orders into smaller pieces, prosecutors said.